The Situation

Boston Interiors, a family owned and operated furniture retailer with seven locations throughout Massachusetts, sought to reduce operating costs at its retail locations. Having identified lighting as an area that could offer significant savings, cost and energy savings was not the only priority for Boston Interiors. As a retailer that prides itself on quality and style, it was critical to Boston Interiors that its lighting provide excellent color rendering to highlight its quality furniture and catch customers’ eyes. Boston Interiors evaluated LED PAR lamps from a number of manufacturers, but ultimately determined that North American lighting leader OSRAM SYLVANIA offered the best color rendering qualities and overall solution to meet all of its goals.

The Solution

Boston Interiors selected its retail store in Stoughton, Mass. as the pilot location for upgrading the lighting to LEDs. Having selected OSRAM SYLVANIA’s ULTRA High Performance Series PAR38 LED retrofit lamps to replace the existing 60-watt halogen lamps throughout the store, Boston Interior was very satisfied with the quality of light and color rendering of the ULTRA High Performance Series LEDs, and trusted the established expertise of OSRAM SYLVANIA. OSRAM SYLVANIA’s ULTRA High Performance Series LED lamps provided the perfect solution to reduce energy consumption and maintenance costs, while providing exceptional lighting performance and creating an appealing store environment.

The Product

OSRAM SYLVANIA’s ULTRA High Performance Series LED retrofit lamps utilize state-of-the art LED technology to provide energy efficient alternatives to traditional lighting technologies. The retrofit at Boston Interiors’ Stoughton store replaced less efficient halogen light sources with OSRAM SYLVANIA’s LED lamps, providing better illumination to showcase the store’s variety of merchandise without affecting the true colors the furniture. In addition, the lack of UV and IR radiation makes these lamps ideal for highlighting merchandise as discoloration and fading of materials is minimized.

Designed to be a direct replacement for standard incandescent, halogen and compact fluorescent (CFL) lamps, the ULTRA Series of LED-based lamps offer increased lumen output, dimming functionality, attractive family styling and indoor/outdoor ratings, as well as simple and easy installation. Mercury and lead free, ULTRA High Performance Series LEDs are an environmentally preferable alternative to existing light sources, and are suitable for commercial, retail and residential applications.

The Bottom Line and Green Effect

As a result of the retrofit to LED lighting, Boston Interiors will save over $8,000 annually in energy and maintenance costs at its Stoughton store. Over the lifetime of the lamps, the savings will total nearly $100,000 over approximately 12 years. In addition to the energy and maintenance savings, Boston Interiors has also noticed savings in cooling the Stoughton store. Because OSRAM SYLVANIA’s LED lamps produce far less heat than halogen lamps, Boston Interiors has not needed to rely on its HVAC system quite as much since the LED lighting was installed.

In addition to cost savings, the LED lighting has enabled Boston Interiors to reduce its carbon footprint, as the company is committed to green initiatives. The retrofit is a major contributor in helping reduce the store’s energy consumption by 48,315 kilowatt hours (kWh), the equivalent of 74,163 Pounds of Carbon Dioxide (CO2). With the success of this installation, Boston Interiors is now planning to retrofit its Hanover and Saugus stores in the coming months, further expanding its cost and environmental savings across multiple store locations.